1. First of all, Perry carried consistent branding from his website to his email marketing strategy. The image header of the email clearly identifies his company, which is built on his name. The style and colors are also consistent from the website. Immediately, I felt comfortable knowing that the communication came from him. In a world of scams, consistent branding develops trust.
    
2. Content is centered, which differentiates his email from standard communications.  Combined with a colored background, the focus is on the message inside.
    
3. Content is short. Today more than ever, we have less time available to evaluate whether an ad message deserves our attention.
    
4. Embedding a Video in email can increase conversion rates by 50%, according to a case study by MarketingSherpa. The term 'embedding' is used loosely and can mean a variety of methods for inserting video into email. Perry chose to simply insert a flat screenshot of the video player with a frame of video, which links to a landing page on his site specifically setup for the video. Also to draw attention, he inserted what appears to be a hand-drawn caption to check it out. I know you want to see it, so watch Perry's Bobsled Run Video with George W. Bush.
    
5. Only four links are available for clicking in this email, which makes this communication an email blast rather than a newsletter. Perry wants us to do a very specific thing: Watch the video to learn about his Bobsled Run. There are no links in a navigation menu to distract.

• CONNECT members to other advertising industry professionals and resources;
• Encourage, support, and recognize members in their quest to CREATE the very best in advertising; and
• INSPIRE young professionals to enter the advertising profession.

1. The phrase "The Place To Be" is in their domain name: www.ThePlaceToBeIndy.com, which is one of Google's factors in SEO ranking. Notice they did not choose www.ThePlaceToBe.com, because is already owned by someone else. If you have a business or idea for a business, secure the domain name right away for future use!
    
2. All pages are titled with keyword-friendly phrases, including "The Place to Be in Indy" in every one.
    
3. Their URLs are short and meaningful. Google rewards you for telling them what a page is about in the filename before it scours the page for content, ie. http://theplacetobeindy.com/attractions.asp?s=walking-distance will tell visitors about the walking distance to attractions.
    
4. The Site Architecture (code on the back-end) is pretty solid. They separate the functional code of their site from the design by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which makes the site easy for search engines to find, and effectively adds to your search engine optimization.
    
5. They use DIV Tags instead of Tables, which enables Search Engine spiders to crawl the site easier.
    
6. Heading Tags ie, H1, H2, H3, are used appropriately and hierarchically, which will tell search engines what content is most important to index.
    
7. They use the Keyword Metatag on every page and the Description Metatag on the homepage.
    
8. They generated an XML Sitemap, which will help Search engines index the content on the site faster.
    

One of our main inquiries lately has been for web strategy consulting. We hear, "How do I rank higher in the search engines?" and "What are some good tips for writing content for my website?"  Well today, I decided to pen some tips about content writing that will hopefully get you off the ground and running for your web based strategy.

#1 - Write naturally, human visitors benefit the most. It's not about keyword density (the number of keywords). Search engines are smarter than they used to be, and now they're more concerned with you writing content for visitors (real human beings), so don't worry about stuffing keywords too closely together.

#2 - Make a list of the keywords you would like to be found for in search. Sometimes it is best to make this list before starting to write, so you can think about using them as you write. However, some writers work the other way around and would rather get all their thoughts down first, and then go back and weave in the desired keywords into the copy.

#3 - Structure the keywords you consider most important at the top. Hierarchy is important to humans, so search engines have adopted the same criterion. Write the topic at the top of the page. Use sub-headings above lists and sub-sections when possible and meaningful.

#4 - Stick to one topic per page. Keep the main idea the main idea. Feel free to introduce some details of a topic on the main page, but if you have a lot of content, break it up into several pages. Create links from the main page to subsequent pages.

For example: The topic is Tendonopathy.
The main page is: Overview of Tendonopathy
Subpages are: Conditions of Tendonopathy, Diagnoses of Tendonopathy, Solutions for Tendonopathy, etc.

This method is a stumbling block to most, because they often want to spill everything onto one page. Spill is bad for at least two reasons:

1. For humans it makes pages extremely long, even if well formatted. Most of us now balk at immense amounts of text on a page.
    
2. Search engines will only see one page on the topic. If you separate the topic into several pages, you can create links between those pages and use <H1> tags on every page, which tells search engines you have more content than just one page.

• A poor example of anchor text: "For conditions on tendonopathy, click here."
  Using here as the link provides no benefit to search engines even though humans understand what the link is for.
   
• A good example of anchor text, the above-mentioned subpage: Conditions of Tendonopathy - a great example because it describes in detail what is on the destination page. This example could be in a bulleted list with other subpages.
   
• Another good use of anchor text is to look for ways to use either the same phrase or variations of the phrase in the body of the content.
  
  For example, "Yesterday, I was talking with someone about the conditions of tendonopathy, and they were telling me about their experience." Here is a variation: "...in my practice, I have been able to identify many patients who have developed serious long term problems in tendonopathy, neuropathy and other endocrine conditions...".
   

• #3 (above) will need HTML heading tags to make them stand out as headers to both humans and search engines: <H1> tags for top of page titles, <H2> tags for sub-headings, and <H3> tags for sections under subheadings, when needed.
• #5 - bolding keywords should be relatively easy with most content edtitors.
• #6 - keywords for links should already be written, so just highlight the phrase and make the link. Also many editors will let you add a title to the link to let users know where they are going and to increase accessibility.
  
  If you struggle with writing content for your website or blog, let us help. We are web consultants with writers on staff that are great at listening, which is the most important part of helping someone do anything.  And then, they're good at crafting what you do into material your visitors can understand.
  
  If your site isn't ranking well right now in the search engines, consider these writing tips, and contact us to help you implement a strong website strategy.
  
   

When you're looking for a good example of how to be part of an online social media community, look no further than 104 year old Ivy Bean of England.

Over the last year, she has enjoyed letting the world know about what she's been doing.  In that time, she has amassed 31,429 followers on twitter, reached the 5000 friend limit on Facebook, and brought international attention through an interview with CNN.
 


What does this mean for you who have been hesitant to get into social media? Now, it's true that she's not sitting in sales meetings all day, designing billboards, or maintaining corporate infrastructures.  BUT, she has proven that it is easy to enter the conversation, and when you have fun doing it, people are interested. She doesn't have a website strategy, and the only Internet marketing benefits that she knows about are the good feelings that she gets sharing photos and updates online.

Take a few notes from Bean.  Keep it simple, and jump in with what you do and enjoy!
 

• Ivy Bean on Twitter - Now, I'm follower 31,430.
• Ivy Bean on Facebook (You can't friend her, but you can join one of the several Facebook Groups created in her honor)
• Ivy Bean on TwitPic
• Ivy Bean on CNN

In my last post, I tackled setting up search and replace filters in Google Analytics. But today, I thought we needed a simple post about installing the code correctly and efficiently for those just getting started.

"There's no need for such a post," some might say, "why not just follow Google Analytics' instructions when setting up a new account; it's foolproof."

"Au contraire," I reply, "follow Google's instructions if you want to frustrate your web developers with getting in and out of the code multiple times, follow my instructions if you want to be ready for the future."

The Myth about the Default Google Analytics Installation

After creating a new profile (which you still need to do btw) the instruction page says:
"Copy the following code block into every webpage you want to track immediately before the </body> tag."

The reason Google says to do this is so that all of the content on your page loads first, and then the tracking code executes. This is a nice gesture; Google doesn't want their code to hindering your visitors from seeing the content on your site in the event all of their 1 million servers go down.  However, such an installation can hinder YOU down the road from taking advantage of additional features.

A Healthy Example

Install the Code Efficiently The First Time

Still Having Trouble?

Read Google's good Help doc: Why Isn't Google Analytics Tracking My Website? and/or Watch the video below:

Over the weekend, I was skimming through one of the books in SAMS Teach Yourself Programming series while watching Numb3rs and Flashpoint.  Today, three things stood out to me while reviewing analytics:

1. Garbage In, Garbage Out,
2. Computers are stupid (they only do what humans program them to do), and
3. A value without meaning is simply data.  Add meaning, and you get Information.

The Challenge

The website was built on a dynamic database, and all pages were showing up in analytics as:

/index.asp?pageID=11&type=0&project=14&after=0&page=5

Index.asp registered as the only page with a slew of varying IDs. The account was full of data, but it was garbage to me, because I didn’t know what all the IDs meant.  My client didn’t either, and that’s why they approached me seeking actionable information that we could all understand.  The problem wasn't with the analytics installation; the data was accurately reported as given by the code on the site.  The original programmer is not to blame, because *I imagine* he built the site to spec according to the website strategy at the time of creation.

The Solution

Setup the analytics to interpret pages differently, which involves:

• Planning
• Spreadsheets, and
• Permissions (You must be an admin on the Google Analytics Account)

If you're not using Google Analytics, confirm your analytics program offers “Search and Replace” filters to be applied to the URI/URL field. If so, proceed to Part 1. If not, you may have to go another route; consult your analytics vendor.  You could still do Parts 1 & 2 and provide that information to a new analytics vendor.

Part1
First, create a URL List to view all the variables on the site.
Next, open a spreadsheet program, like Excel, and create two tables:

1. The first table has two columns:
   1. Label one column variable, and type out all the variables from the URL List (ie. &type=0, &after=0, etc.)
   2. Label the other column meaning, and find the meaning of all the variables & their values from the site (ie. Kitchen)
      
      1. You may have to open the site, click a page, and look in the address bar to see what the variables are. Then try to determine what each one means. You may need help from web consultants or the original development team.
      2. Also, focus on the most important looking variables like type=0 and project=1, because they are probably more important in understanding meaning than News=99 and Page=6.
   3. Label the table Variable Map
       
2. The second table also has two columns:
   
   1. Label one Search, and populate it with the URL List created above, and
   2. Label the other column Replace.
   3. Label the table Search and Replace Strings

Part 2
Determine how you want to rewrite your URLs.

Instead of this:                 /index.asp?pageID=11&type=0&project=14&after=0&page=5
I wanted to see this:          /Portfolio/Kitchen/Project14/BeforePhotos/Page5

I went through each URL and figured out how to rewrite it so that it would turn out as desired, ie.

/index.asp?        should be replaced by:     /
pageID=11        should be:                        Portfolio
&type=0            should be:                        /Kitchen
&project=14      should be:                       /Project14
&after=0           should be:                       /BeforePhotos
&page=5          should be:                       /Page5

If you have a lot of URLs to rewrite, use functions like VLOOKUP and CONCATENATE to find strings from the URL List and concatenate the slashes “/” in place.

Also, if you’re using Google Analytics, you need to review Regular Expressions and tweak your “Search Column” variables slightly. For example, when Google Analytics searches for question marks, they need to be ‘escaped’ with a backslash "", and since "/index.asp?" is the start of the url I saw in the analytics reports, it needs to have a carat in front so that the Search part looks like this:   ^index.asp?

Part 3
Once you have the Search and Replace columns filled in, you’re ready to setup the Analytics Filters. For Google Analytics, filter setup is easy. Simply perform the following:

1. Login to your Analytics Account
   1. TIP: Never apply filters to your primary analytics profile unless fully tested; always create a new profile. If you apply a filter to your master profile and the filter settings are amiss, you could miss out on important data and there’s no way to get it back. So, always create a new (extra) profile.
      
      
2. Click Add Website Profile at bottom-left
   1. Select Add a Profile for an existing domain
   2. Select the domain from the drop-down
   3. In Profile Name, I’d recommend something like: domain.com – Content Replaced
   4. Choose your Time Zone and Country, and click Finish.
   5. Note: No new analytics code needs to be installed, all of the data will simply be feeding into two profiles on one domain under one analytics account.
      
      
3. Click Filter Manager
   1. Click Add Filter
      1. Name the filter (I recommend “[search string] to [replace string]” so you can read it from the list easily), ie: ^index.asp? to /
      2. From the Filter Type drop-down, select Custom filter
      3. Select Search and Replace radio-button
      4. From Filter field drop-down, select Request URI at the top.
      5. Insert your search string in the Search String box, ie. ^index.asp?
      6. Insert your replace string in the Replace String box, ie. /
      7. Case sensitivity relates only to the Search String, so decide if you need it.
   2. Repeat 3.1. until you have added all filters.
       
4. Generate Traffic to the new profile by browsing the site for a few minutes, clicking on as many pages as possible to test the new variables you’ve setup.
    
5. Wait until your statistics gather. With Google Analytics, it takes at least 4 hrs to track into the account, so next day may be best.
    
6. Review either the Top Content Report or Content Drilldown, and determine if any variables need adjusting.
    
7. Revise filters as needed
    
8. Repeat steps 5 & 6 until the data looks the way you want it to.

Isn't the goal of every web based strategy to make money?  Even non-profits seek donations for their charitable end.

Since Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.6 billion, analysts have feared the company is losing money.  It was news to me that Youtube has been monetizing views on paid ads for awhile now, despite this year's projected loss of $470 million.  On the upswing, company executives said, "[Youtube is] on a trajectory to become a 'very profitable business for us' in the 'not too distant future.'"

Senior VP for Product Mgmt notes that "brand advertising is most appropriate for YouTube's home page, while text ads are suitable when users are searching for videos, and overlay or instream ads are best when users are watching videos."

What does this mean for Youtube's social media community? If the introduction of ads is not done delicately, I envision a decline in the community experience. Maybe viewers will move to Hulu and Vimeo?  However, if done well, it could boost Youtube's own social media advertising and bring on yet more followers.

I'm sure the Youtube team will perform ad-testing on some of their 22 countries' sites before an all-site rollout.  I've already seen some instream ads, and while a pain to close, I understand that they're a necessary part of the services I am receiving for free.

1. What are my business' goals?
2. What online and offline strategies (a) are we using, and (b) can we use?
3. What tactics and resources are available to carry them out and synergize?

The Battle
The amount of information on Search Engine Optimization is mind boggling - a whopping 84 million Google results.  Many are "industry professionals" implying to know Google's secret sauce, or promising page 1 rankings, but who can you trust? I say about 1% of them.

In recent years, Google has been putting the smack down on the Decepticons of the web, who suggest shady techniques like hidden text and sneaky redirects.

Knowing is Half the Battle
Make sure you have a complete Internet Marketing strategy, and don't look for quick fixes.  Forget wasting time with potentially harmful methods, and take Google's Webmaster Guidelines as the foundation for search engine optimization, and you'll be on the right track.   The 20 guidelines are easy to understand, so you're not left with mental agony.

Implementation is the Other Half
Fusework Studios has web consultants that can help with upgrading your website to becoming more search engine friendly. So give us a call or request a free web evaluation to see what we can do for you.

Now you're ahead of the game, and you don't have to wonder what the best search engine optimization practices are anymore.